The puzzle in this story is not the talking snake, or the
tempting, or even the blame shifting when they are found out from Adam to Eve
to the snake. The puzzle is the
forbidding to eat from the tree of knowledge of good and evil. Surely if human beings are anything they are
sentient, moral deciding creatures. We
have the ability to decide and weigh up the consequences of actions, which is a
very advanced cognitive function. We can
decide that some things make for fruitful coexistence and contribute to the common
good and some things do not. We have a
sense of responsibilities for one another and out of these moral decision
making flows: we feast daily on the fruit of the ‘good-and-bad- knowledge
tree’. So why does the Genesis story
make a fuss about eating from this tree?
To know the difference between good and bad is wisdom and
wisdom is a gift from God. King Solomon
when offered anything he desired asked God for wisdom and prosperity
followed. In ancient personifying,
wisdom is female and she is desired.
Sophia, the Logos, the Word that became flesh in John’s gospel, touches
God’s very thoughts and purpose. So to
be moral is to be imbued with the Spirit of God. And it is not something that can be
grasped. It has to be accepted as a
discipline, something that we dedicate our will towards and train in. It is not something that can just be plucked
from a tree.
So I think what is out of bounds with the warning not to eat
the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of good and evil is the desire for easy
wisdom. It is a warning not to go for
the easy answers that can just be plucked from the tree. And it’s a warning for those of us who like
using Twitter and Facebook, where thoughts are reduced to 140 characters. We have to watch out that communicating in
sound bites does not become thinking in sound bites. That is the warning for politicians and those
who have to watch their media presence and image. Some things in life are much more
complicated, most in fact.
This snake makes a reappearance in the wilderness as Jesus
is thinking through the ministry he is about to embark on (Matthew4:1-11). The three
temptations we heard in the gospel are for easy food, easy power and easy
life. They are the avoidance of work,
the avoidance of gaining respect and the avoidance of consequences. Power is to be grasped, food to be picked off
a shelf with no cost and life can be reckless.
It doesn’t take much imagination to see how those have run rife in
personal morality, how we live in community and in national and international
politics. No one can assume that they
have a right to govern and even inherited monarchies have to win people’s
respect to govern effectively. No one is
owed a free living but we care when there is need. No one can avoid the
consequence of fast living, abusing bodies or behaving recklessly.
So where do we find the snake’s tempting today? In the church there are temptations to avoid
the difficult questions by a shallow supernaturalism. Prayer is treated as magic, the bible is
reduced to a rulebook that we just have to look up the answers in. The bible is much more like a conversation
and we join in with it bringing who we are to the discussion. We need to know something about the situation
it was written in and there are conversations between different books within it
which stem from different times. The
snake can be spotted with the words ‘the bible teaches’. What that phrase really means is ‘my reading
of the scriptures and reflection on them leads me to conclude’. That’s different. We really can’t just pluck answers off the
tree.
In politics there is a temptation to jump to the easy
answers. Newspapers of the left and
right both do this all the time. They
have their formulaic assumptions as soon as certain stories come their way and
we are taken to the land of pre-judged conclusions. So what is going on in the Ukraine? Is it Russian expansionism wanting to annex
neighbouring states? Is it the protection
of access to a seaport on the Black Sea and to prevent this becoming a NATO
base so that the Russian navy access is assured? Is there an element of intervention to
prevent a neighbouring country from meltdown?
Is it American expansionism and empire building wanting to take
strategic control of the same naval base?
Where does gas fit in and ensuring the lights stay on? Can we have cost free sanctions and what
would the ultimate aim be? Who is right
here, where is good and evil in a highly complex geopolitical power
struggle? I admit to being confused over
this one at the moment. It is
interesting though to note all of this in the year we are remembering the
outbreak of the First World War, which has geopolitical power struggles,
empires and expansionism written through the heart of it, I hope we have better
channels of communication than we had 100 years ago. I hope we have learnt where the arrogance of
that time got us. I’m not so
certain. The historians don’t seem to be
agreeing on what the lessons of World War I are so, to adapt a phrase, that
means we may be doomed to repeat the mistakes – hopefully without the same
disastrous consequences.
Struggling with good and evil, with moral choices, is part
of what it means to be human. The
temptation is to jump for easy answers be they from shallow readings of a book
out of context, or formulaic and pre-judged conclusions. Watch out for the talking snakes; there are
more of them about than we might have previously thought.
Sermon preached at Peterborough Parish Church, Sunday 9th March 2014
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